Regional Roundtable on
World Programme for the Census of Agriculture 2020
Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago
22-26 May 2017
Use of Technology for field data
capture and compilation
Technical session 17c
Jairo Castano
Senior Statistician
Leader, Agricultural Census and Survey Team
FAO Statistics Division
Overview
 Overview
of CAPI: description,
advantages, disadvantages, products on
the market
 Overview
 Country
of Survey Solutions features
examples: Estonia and Latvia
What is CAPI?
Computer Assisted Personal Interview
(CAPI) software allows recording
responses on a computer or tablet instead
of paper.
What are the advantages of CAPI?
•
Easier Survey Management
•
Reduced variables costs
(No transport costs, no storage costs, no printing costs, no
data-entry costs)
•
Reduced time from data collection to analysis
and reporting
•
Higher quality data
(Enforced skip patterns, validation conditions, look-up
tables)
What are the advantages of CAPI?
Novel question types
 Geo reference, photos, barcodes scanning (for national IDs)
Closer field monitoring
 Export paradata for monitoring activities during
interviews (e.g. start & end time)
 Almost real time export of microdata
Easier to implement changes to questionnaire
 No need to send questionnaires back and forth to field
What are disadvantages of CAPI?
High fixed cost
 Can be reduced by sharing use with other
surveys
Requires more preparation time - programming
and testing questionnaire, procurement
 Time savings on back-end from no data entry
compensates
Many times requires connectivity
 Risks can be reduced by using 2 sim cards,
back-up paper questionnaires, etc.
Others: vulnerability to weather, batteries and
access to power for charging
CAPI Products
Census and Survey Processing System (CSPro) Developed
by the US census bureau and funded primarily by USAID.
Widely used, but lacks survey management tools and requires
programming knowledge. FREE + programming costs
Open Data Kit (ODK): Core developers at UoW – Dpt. Of
Computer Science. Open-sourced, funded partially through
donations of users. FREE+ programming costs
My Survey Solutions: Development supported by the Worl
Bank GS, and first version released in 09.2013. Closed
source, but integrates data management tools, and requires
little to no knowledge of programming. FREE
FAO and Survey Solutions
•
Global Strategy has implemented small
sample surveys in Tanzania, Indonesia,
and Jamaica
•
World Bank in partnership w/ NSOs have
implemented surveys reaching 200K
respondents in Malawi, 400K in Uganda,
and 2.7 million in South Africa.
Survey Solutions Features

User friendly survey management system
built right into the software.
 Survey
designer
that
requires
no
programming skills
 Cloud based data storage and transfer
 Geo references questions (holding location)
 Can accommodate any type of question
 User-friendly Android application for data
entry
Survey Solutions Features (cont’d)

Documentation on every part of the system
available
 E-learning course available online (13
modules)
 Data export available in SPSS and STATA
formats.
 DDI
compliant metadata automatically
generated.
 Automatic paradata tabulation for field
monitoring
*DDI: Data Documentation Initiative, an int’l standard for describing statistical data
Country Experiences
• BRASIL - Agricultural Census 2006 & 2017
Smartphones in 2006 and Sansung Galaxy Tablets
for 2017.
• MEXICO
- VII Census of agriculture,
livestock and forestry 2007
• PDAs in 2007 and netbooks in 2018.
• URUGUAY - General Agricultural Census
2011
Tracking of holdings using GPS and espreadsheets for area coverage.
Country experiences on use of CAPI,
CATI, CASI and GPS technologies in
census
Country
CAPI/GPS/PDA/C
name
Countries are increasingly
using IT technology in
agricultural censuses for:
 data collection (CAPI,
CASI, CATI);
 identification of location
for field operation
of
enumerators (GPS);
 online monitoring of the
progress
in
field
operations in real time.
Estonia
France
Latvia
Malta
Poland
Slovenia
Lithuania
Netherlands
Iceland
Austria
Finland
Sweden
Mozambique
Venezuela
Argentina
Colombia
Brazil
Mexico
Canada
Uruguay
USA
Australia
Jordan
Thailand
Iran
Year of census
ATI/CASI
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2010
2009/2010
2008
2008
2014
2006
2007
2011
CAPI, CASI
CAPI
CAPI, CATI,CASI,
CAPI
CAPI, CATI,CASI
CAPI, CATI
CASI
CASI
CASI
CASI
CASI
CASI, CATI
CAPI, GPS
CAPI, GPS
CAPI
CAPI
CAPI
CAPI
2011
GPS
CASI
CASI
CAPI
CAPI
CAPI
2012
2011
2007
2013
2014
CASI
Thank You